I went from the room. The man near the doorway looked at me as I went past him. I felt his eyes on me. He reminded me vaguely of Jakob Daw.
In synagogue that Shabbos Mr. Helfman said to me, “Good Shabbos, Ilana. How are you?”
“Good Shabbos,” I said politely, and turned and walked away from him.
He said to me in school, “You still haven’t turned in your essay, Ilana.” I said nothing.
“The term isn’t over yet,” he said. “I don’t want to threaten you.”
Still I said nothing.
For a long moment he stood behind his desk, looking at me. Then he dismissed me with an abrupt wave of his hand.
My father said to us that night during supper, “It had nothing to do with Mr. Helfman. He was against it from the start.”
“What do you mean?” my mother said.
“He was against the decision not to give the award to Ilana. The faculty voted for it because word came down from the board.”
“I don’t understand,” David said.
There had been secret figures behind the decision, my father said. Authorities in high academies of learning who had let it be known through intermediaries that they would look with disapproval upon a yeshiva where a girl was publicly shown to be the best student of a graduating class that had boys in it. This had not been a mean and petty decision, my father said, but a statement of strong policy from some of the most powerful figures in the Torah world. What sort of future students of Torah would come out of a class where the best student was a girl? And how could a high academy of Torah learning accept any boy from such a class? But no one would say with certainty who those mysterious authorities had been.
“I don’t believe it,” my mother said.
“That’s what I was told,” my father said.
“Some of the boys in my yeshiva heard about it,” David said, “and are laughing because a girl is graduating first in the class. They’re calling it a school for wives.”
“I cannot believe this is happening,” my mother said.
When had I heard her say that before? When my father had disappeared in Spain? When Jakob Daw had been deported? I cannot believe this is happening.
“Mr. Helfman wanted me to get the award?” I asked.
“Yes,” my father said.
“Thank you,” I said.
I went to my room and was up most of the night and handed the essay to Mr. Helfman at the start of class the next day. He took it without a word and returned it to me the following day. I had titled it with the Hebrew words “Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue.” It was an analysis of the comments of Rashi on that verse: “Seek after a proper court of law….” He returned it without comment and I saw on top of its first page, in red ink, the Hebrew letter aleph.
My father stopped making phone calls and inquiries. In the end the issue, such as it was, faded away. Even Ruthie stopped talking about it. How long could anyone be expected to remain upset over such a small indecency?
I was graduated from that school on a sunny day in the middle of June. The large room was crowded. All our family was there. Aunt Sarah had been invited but wrote that she couldn’t come because her mother was very ill. I wore stockings and white shoes and a white short-sleeved dress with a square neck, a cinched waist, and a flared skirt. I wore a corsage of roses. My long hair was pulled up at the sides and caught in the back in a barrette. It was a hot day and people sat fanning themselves with the program, which carried in bold type the names of all who were receiving awards and prizes.
To my surprise, Reuven Maker’s name was not listed as the recipient of the Akiva Award; it was given to another male student in the class. I had avoided looking for the pictures and announcements in the newspapers. Reuven Maker received the prize in mathematics.
I do not remember what the boy who received the Akiva Award said in his farewell talk.
I was given the English prize and the Bible prize and an honorable mention in history for an essay I had written on the Spanish Civil War.
Reuven Maker came over to me immediately after the graduation ceremony.
“I don’t want anything I don’t earn, Ilana,” he said. “It wasn’t mine, it was yours. What they did wasn’t right. If that had happened to me …”
He left the sentence unfinished.
Later I saw him walk up to a small, thin-shouldered man. The two of them embraced. It was the same man who had come into Mr. Helfman’s classroom some weeks back, the man who had vaguely reminded me of Jakob Daw.
Some hours after the graduation ceremony I lay on my bed listening to the sounds of the wind in the tree outside my open window. It was early evening. Soft light lay upon the street. My parents were in the kitchen, listening to the news. David was in his room, studying Talmud.
I lay in my white graduation dress with my hands over my eyes, thinking about the day. The dense crowd milling outside the school building. Handshakes and congratulations and smiles and noise, and the glances of my classmates—some sad, others smirking—who knew what had happened. I lay very still and felt the anger rising within me. How sweet it could have been! How proud I could have made my family! And it was mine, really mine. And it had been stolen from me for a reason I could not control: I was a girl. What else would they steal from me in the coming years? I would accomplish something, and they would tell me I couldn’t have it because I was a girl. I had made this community my home, and now I felt betrayed by it. It was like turning a corner in one of the neighborhoods where I had lived as a child and never knowing if that gang leader with the pimpled face and glittering eyes would suddenly come upon me. How could I be a part of such a community? I felt suddenly alone. And for the first time I began to understand how a single event could change a person’s life. I could understand something of my mother’s terrible moment in that forest and my father’s in Centralia and Jakob Daw’s in the gas attack. How do you fight faceless phantoms? What would the westering women do now? What would Uncle Jakob do? They would use their imaginations. Uncle Jakob would write a story. I didn’t want to write a story. I only wanted to say a few words of good-bye. That’s all. A few words of good-bye.
I lay on my bed and kept going over the day again and again. You can’t call it back. It’s gone. Like my little baby brother. Gone. Like Papa. Gone. Like Uncle Jakob. Gone. Like Guernica. Gone. Like everyone who is dying in the war. Gone.
I felt the wind blowing into the room, felt it warm against my hot face. How I raged inside myself! I had wanted to show that I could be a Jewish hero—a scholar. I had wanted to enter Jewish history. I had wanted to be part of that warm and wondrous world—and they wouldn’t let me. They had denied it to me because of a circumstance. An injustice had been performed by a world that taught justice. How could I live in that world now? How could I be part of its heart and soul, its core? Why should I continue to be part of something that behaved this way? How could I trust it?
I lay very still with my hands over my eyes, feeling the anger like a boiling juncture of tides. The wind moved through the room, stirring the wooden balls of the harp. The harp sang softly in the stillness….
That was strange. How could so gentle a wind stir the harp to music?
I opened my eyes and sat up on the bed.
The harp hung on the door, covered by shadows. The softest of music was coming from it, faint, as if borne on wind, and an odd distant fluttering as of a waking bird shaking and fluffing and stretching its wings. I sat on my bed, listening….
And then—and then Ilana Davita came down from the bed and walked slowly to the harp and stood very still, gazing up at it, and quite suddenly the harp began to grow before her eyes, quickly, growing and growing. And then with a start she realized that it was not the harp that was growing larger but she, Ilana Davita, who was growing smaller. In her white shoes and white dress and stockings, smaller, quickly smaller, so that the balls of the harp were suddenly like huge boulders and the strings thick, the size of the trees that Paul Bunyan used
to cut down. And then she was suddenly lifted by the wind that blew in through the window and brought gently into the circular heart of the harp—and there she found herself between the black bird of Jakob Daw and the gray bird of Guernica; Ilana Davita, in her white graduation dress, between birds that were now fully awake and stirring. Wings brushed against her, beaks pecked gently at her arms. The birds stood, wings outspread, and began to grow. They stood on the edge of their circular nest, craning their necks, pecking into their feathers, stretching. Then they flew off, each to one side of the harp, and grasped the harp with their talons and lifted it off the door. The harp yawed and swayed and sang as the birds flew it carefully through the room; and, from the circular heart of the harp, Ilana Davita saw the wall near her bed and the picture of the beach and the stallions. The wall and the picture came closer and closer, and in a moment she could see nothing but the picture, and suddenly she was through some kind of unseen wall and inside the picture, and she could hear the wind that blew in from the water; and the birds, their wings fluttering, brought the harp down ever so gently on the grass near the front stone step of the farmhouse and lifted her out and set her down on the wooden porch.
I stood on the porch, facing the beach and the sea and the stallions that grazed quietly on the summer grass. How sweet the wind was! And everything so still. And the gulls circling the beach and softly calling.
Behind me the door to the porch opened quietly. I turned—and it was my father, Michael Chandal.
Hello, my love! he said gaily. You didn’t think we wouldn’t show up, did you? Look how you’ve grown! Hasn’t she grown, Sarah?
My Aunt Sarah stepped out onto the porch, smiling. She most certainly has. She is a young lady.
Give us a hug, Davita. A big hug. That’s right. Say, you are a big girl!
He grinned broadly and ran his hand over his curly brown hair. How young he looked, my father.
May we begin? said a voice from inside the house. And my father said, Come on outside, Jakob. It’s too beautiful to hold a graduation inside on a day like today.
Jakob Daw came out to the porch, carrying a folding chair.
Hello, Ilana Davita, he said. How are you feeling? You took good care of our bird, I see. You even added a bird of your own. A wise girl. Then he smiled and said, You see? Stories may have some use after all.
They sat on chairs on the porch, waiting. How radiant they looked! How alive! Waiting. On the beach one of the stallions whinnied, the sound carrying clearly through the silence.
I only wanted to say a few words, I said. That’s all.
Say them, my love. That’s what we came all this way to hear. Say them. We’re listening to you.
I stood there, facing them, sunlight on my face.
I began to talk.
I told them that I wanted to speak to my family and my friends, to the world and to this century. I wanted to say that my mother was once badly hurt in Poland because she was a Jewish woman, and my father was killed while trying to save a nun in Guernica, and my uncle died in part because of his politics and in part because he wrote strange stories. I wanted to say that I’m very frightened to be living in this world and I don’t understand most of the things I see and hear and I don’t know what will happen to me and to the family I love. I wanted to say that I would try to find and join with the side of America that wouldn’t hurt people like Wesley Everest, and I would also try not to let this century defeat me. I wanted to say good-bye to Papa and thank him for his love and his laughter and for the way he used to hug me, and also for teaching me about Paul Bunyan. And I wanted to say goodbye to Uncle Jakob and thank him for his stories and for the way his glasses used to shine in the light when he wrote at the desk in his room and for the way he didn’t care much about his clothes and walked on the beach with his hands clasped behind his back. And I wanted to thank Aunt Sarah for her kindness. And I wanted to show everyone the harp so they could see where the decent music of the world comes from. And I wanted to use some quotes from the Bible and from Rabbi Akiva. That’s all I wanted to say. It wasn’t very much. I couldn’t think of anything original like one of Uncle Jakob’s stories. But they wouldn’t let me say it.
There was a long silence.
I liked those words, my father said quietly.
They were very fine words, Uncle Jakob said. Good words.
You are quite a young lady, Aunt Sarah said. I thank our Lord for bestowing upon you His favor.
I’m going to applaud that speech, my father said.
As will I, said Uncle Jakob.
And I, said Aunt Sarah.
There were only the three of them on the porch—but it seemed the beach, the birds, the sea, and the sky all joined in the applause. And above all the noise was the harp, singing and singing, for all the Ilana Davitas who never had a chance to speak their few words to this century.
My father rose from his chair. It’s time to go, he said. Give us a hug, my love. A whole world of a hug. A century of a hug. It’s got to last a long time.
I held him and was crying and closed my eyes.
That’s a hug! he said loudly and cheerfully.
Good-bye, Ilana Davita, said Uncle Jakob. You will take care of our birds, yes?
And take care of that harp, said my father. Good-bye, Davita. Give your mother my love.
I stood there, crying, and could not open my eyes.
Then I heard the sudden thunder of hoofbeats. I opened my eyes and there were my father and my uncle racing across the beach on the stallions toward the sea. The water splashed all about the galloping horses, rose in white foaming waves to their knees and flanks and shoulders and necks. Then they were suddenly all gone, but the sea still foamed and boiled. And then, very slowly, it settled back into calm and watery silence.
Overhead the gulls circled and wheeled and called. Aunt Sarah stood with her arm around my shoulder. We looked out at the silent sea.
Where will you go to school in September? she asked. A public high school. A very good one. Are you very angry, Davita? Yes.
If you continue to be angry at the world, you’re in for a lot of trouble.
I’m getting used to trouble, I said.
She smiled. My brother and Jakob Daw didn’t know it, she said softly, but they were possessed of sacred discontent. Oh, yes. Especially my brother. That’s why I loved him.
Near the farmhouse the birds stirred faintly as they waited alongside the harp.
It was a good talk, my Aunt Sarah said. They should have let you give it.
I was quiet.
Good-bye, Davita. Be discontented with the world. But be respectful at the same time. Good-bye, Aunt Sarah. She kissed my cheek.
I walked toward the harp, the wind on my face and the silence in my ears. The birds rose from the grass, their wings beating. The harp ascended into the air. There was the sea and the farmhouse far below me and my Aunt Sarah, waving. And then it was all gone, and I sat on my bed, gazing at the picture on my wall and at the harp on my door, and listening to my mother calling me to help her set the table for supper.
• • •
In early July my mother gave birth to a baby girl. My father walked around dazed with joy. David went about smiling broadly and for a few days even neglected his studies and kept going with me to the hospital to visit our mother and stare at the baby.
I remember when they brought her home. She lay small in the crib in my parents’ bedroom. I didn’t think anyone could be so small—though my black and gray birds were smaller still as they nested once again in my harp.
That Shabbos morning my father was brought up to the Torah and I heard him chant the blessing and saw him at first dimly through the ninon curtain and then clearly through the rip in the fabric. The Torah was read by David. My father chanted the closing blessing. Then I heard the baby being named—after my father’s mother, the aunt with whom my mother had lived when she had first arrived in America from the wars and pogroms of Europe. Rachel daughter of Ezra and Channa
h Dinn. There were shouts of “Mazol tov! Mazol tov!”
That afternoon I watched her nursing at my mother’s breast. Sunlight came into the living room through the wide bay window and fell upon my mother and sister. Later my mother let me hold her. I sat in the sunlight with my sister in my arms, warm and nestling against me. My mother stepped out of the room. I held my sister and rocked her gently back and forth and smelled the scents of her tininess—oil and powder and milk—and I thought, in a moment of bitterness, Enjoy your childhood. They’ll take it away from you soon enough. And then I said, softly, my mouth close to her ear, speaking so softly that only my tiny birds and my tiny sister could hear, “I want to tell you a story. It’s a strange story. It doesn’t have an ending. But you might find it interesting anyway. It’s a story about two birds and some horses on a beach far away. Are you listening, little Rachel? And it’s about a door harp….”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAIM POTOK was born and raised in New York City. He began to write fiction at the age of sixteen, was graduated with a B.A. summa cum laude in English literature, and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. An ordained rabbi, he served as an army chaplain in Korea for sixteen months, with, successively, a front-line medical battalion and an engineer combat battalion. He is the author of nine other novels and of Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews. His first novel, The Chosen, was nominated for a National Book Award and received the Edward Lewis Wallant Award. Another of his novels, The Promise, was given the Athenaeum Prize, and The Gift of Asher Lev won the National Jewish Book Award. He died in 2002 at age 73.
A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1985 by Chaim Potok
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.